Wait

Burnham (It Is Wood, It Is Stone) offers an expressive if diffuse narrative of two first-generation Brazilian American sisters coping with the sudden deportation of their mother. Elise, about to graduate from college in North Carolina, hears from her 18-year-old sister, Sophie, that their mother, Gilda, has disappeared from their home on Nantucket. Elise then ditches her graduation ceremony to be with Sophie. A few days later, Gilda, who was working as a restaurant cook on the island, calls from her hometown in Brazil and explains that she was spied on, detained, and deported by ICE because of a missed court date many years ago, after her work visa expired. Elise returns to her high school job on Nantucket, monitoring endangered species, and Sophie works as a waitress. More trouble arrives after Gilda is served an eviction notice in absentia. Luckily, Sheba, Elise’s rich best friend at college, returns to her family’s summer house on the island and the sisters find refuge in her guesthouse. Burnham ably depicts the instability faced by taxpaying and hardworking immigrants such as Gilda, but loses her way in the gauzy summer chronicle of Elise, Sheba, and Sophie’s endless partying. This lacks the luster of Burnham’s potent debut. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (May)